For those who have not seen or experienced Live@edu before, it is a cloud email service designed for schools, colleges and universities. While it rivals Google Apps for Education and its front facing Gmail application, Outlook Live acts very much like Exchange with Outlook Web Access.

But how often do you get a good, in-depth sneak around the behind-the-scenes? If you've ever been curious as to what your email administrators can do with your email and mailboxes, scroll on through this screenshot gallery.

Here will be the full list of your school, college or university. This includes the display name and email address of all students (and possibly staff) who are using the Live@edu email system. You can reset passwords from here and import new users, which can be run by scripts based on incoming students for the first year of study.

Creating new email inboxes is easy. It instantly updates so as soon as the mailbox is created, the new user can start to send and receive email. They can also be given a mailbox plan, to be given certain rights over other students, if they are deemed appropriate. This can include giving staff accounts access to the Global Address List such as in this case, and students no access to the full directory of users.

You can also add certain users to groups. This allows mass mailing of students or staff sitting on particular committees or engaged in one particular activity. It might be easier using specialist mailing software like Sympa, but Live@edu has this functionality built in.

External contacts are designed for people external to your school, college or university which might have an important role to play nonetheless. This could include a police department or an emergency service located on campus. This allows non-university staff to send emails if necessary.

You can also add MailTips to these external contacts to warn students and staff that they are not affiliated with the university, or that the account is unmonitored.

Note here just underneath the breadcrumb bar of tool icons a note which was added in the previous slide. This allows users to know that email can only be sent under emergency circumstances, and advising the person to dial 911 instead - for example.

Administrator roles can be given to certain students who for example moonlight at the university IT helpdesk. This can allow them to reset passwords during specific times of the day, manage records or help other students search for files or messages they think they may have lost.

Users can be given a mailbox plan, to be given certain rights over other students, if they are deemed appropriate. This can include giving staff accounts access to the Global Address List such as in this case, and students no access to the full directory of users.

In this screenshot, the student is given the DefaultMailboxPlan which allows them access to the Global Address List, a retention policy of "forever", text messaging, voicemail and group distrbution lists.

In this screenshot, the student is given the DefaultMailboxPlan which allows them access to the Global Address List, a retention policy of "forever", text messaging, voicemail and group distrbution lists.

In this screenshot, the student is given the GalDisabledMailboxPlan which disallows them access to the Global Address List, a retention policy of "default", text messaging, voicemail and group distrbution lists.

In this screenshot, the student is given the GalDisabledMailboxPlan which disallows them access to the Global Address List, a retention policy of "default", text messaging, voicemail and group distrbution lists.

Live@edu makes it really easy to migrate email from an IMAP or POP server to import all email into Outlook Live. It can take a very long time in large organisations but on the most part it is simple enough to go through in a few steps.

Using a script to collate Active Directory linked passwords from usernames (plus the domain name of the school, college or university), simply plug the values into one giant CSV file and upload it to the Live@edu wizard. It's surprisingly simple, to be honest.

The final screen runs through all the options you have selected. Live@edu uses CSV files as well as PowerShell, so even though it is very easy to transport existing IMAP inboxes to the cloud-based Live@edu, its possible to use open source tools too.

Domain settings can take up to 72 hours to complete properly so during this process, Live@edu collects email from the old IMAP server still and transports it to Outlook Live - so it is available on the old and new email system. It regularly checks for new email too, so users can use both during the domain transition. Once one stops working, Live@edu takes over and starts running on its own.

Administrators can set rules here which are similar to those in Outlook Live and Outlook alike. This controls the flow of emails in the organisation, and can add filters and disclaimers, and completely restrict external-to-the-domain messages from coming through. It can also be used to prevent phishing emails from known addresses, for example.

In this case, if the message is received by a student from outside the school, college or university domain, a disclaimer can be added automatically to the end of the email for the student to see. In this case, it is to warn that the email has been sent from outside of the university.

Here are the domains managed by the administrator. In this case there is only one school, college or university. However if you are running a series of associate schools in a district, you can have one administrator covering kent.state.edu or surrey.state.edu and so on, with different co-branding on each. These controls are managed through the Windows Live Admin Center, which oversees the entire Live@edu service.

Published: January 19, 2011 -- 08:36 GMT (00:36 PST)

Caption by: Zack Whittaker

The domain admin console is where you can control your domains from. This allows you to switch over your existing IMAP email servers to Live@edu once the migration has completed. You can also run reporting tools to see how many users you have and to keep track of domain management.

The co-branding element is the most important part for the end user. It allows the student user to feel at one with the service with their school, college or university logo at the top, while the institution can maintain branding consistency. From here you can make changes, preview them and if they are correct, publish them to the web so the end user can begin using the new layouts.

The co-branding name is the text at the top of each window that is provided to the student, so this can be your institution name. The logo is the same, of course, but it can be anything you like, including your university logo. Also, once users log off from email, they can be redirected to the student intranet, portal, virtual learning environment or institution webpage.

For other services outside of Outlook Live, including SkyDrive, Office Web Apps and suchlike, you can opt to have the same or a different logo across the top bar of each page that is visited within Windows Live.

Different text links can also be added and changed, such as feeds to your university pages, and also add selected links to services which the school, college or university has signed up to. Some may not want student users to readily available services like SkyDrive, opting for their own university storage instead - so this can be taken out and replaced with something else, or nothing at all.

The closed campus policy allows only internal communications, ideal for K-12 schools, unless an exception is made. This blocks off all traffic from the outside world, including other *.ac.* and *.edu addresses which are not part of the domain system.

Again, ideal for K-12 schools, the bad words policy allows emails not to be sent or received if certain words are part of the policy. This can be added to as and when needed, but as far as I am aware there is no in-built policy. This can be used against any word or even number sequence, should it be needed. If an email matches one of the words in the policy, it will simply not arrive at its destination.

In this test email, you can see that the Test.Account.1 user wishes to send quite an offensive email. The bad words filter is turned on, however. If an email matches one of the words in the policy, it will simply not arrive at its destination.

The test email did not arrive at the destination. If you see the diagnostic information in the auto-reply undeliverable message, you will see that the bad words policy is enabled and that "rude of offensive words contained in emails" cannot be sent. If an email matches one of the words in the policy, it will simply not arrive at its destination.

Delivery reports can be ideal for those who have lost emails or have short folder retention policies. It can also be used as proof should an offensive email be sent to another student or member of staff in the organisation, but also for proving that messages were sent, such as requests for extensions on homework.

Here, you can see that a message was sent without the bad words policy enabled. This can be used as proof against the student should they be proven to have sent rude words through the email system, against IT regulations of the school, college or university.

Depending on the size of mailboxes combined with the number of mailboxes the organisation has, this could range from a few minutes to a few hours - even overnight in some very large organisations spanning multiple domains.

To read more about how the mailbox search feature works, and how schools, colleges and universities can spy not only on their students but also their staff, head over to this screenshot gallery.

Behind the scenes of Microsoft's Live@edu

In this screenshot, the student is given the GalDisabledMailboxPlan which disallows them access to the Global Address List, a retention policy of "default", text messaging, voicemail and group distrbution lists.